Banner photo by Ruben Hopwood
spiritually integrated psychotherapy
An overview for clients and consultation for clinicians working with spiritual, religious, existential, and theological concerns.
Spiritually integrated psychotherapy is a form of talk therapy that intentionally includes a client’s spirituality, religion, values, beliefs, and meaning-making in treatment when those dimensions are important to the client. Rather than leaving these aspects of identity outside the therapy room, this approach treats them as meaningful parts of a person’s inner life that can influence healing, resilience, suffering, and change.
The value of addressing spirituality and religion in mental health treatment is well established. Decades of clinical literature and research have shown that, for many people, these dimensions of life can significantly shape coping, recovery, identity, relationships, and overall well-being.
In practice, spiritually integrated psychotherapy involves thoughtfully exploring a client’s spiritual or religious history, practices, questions, struggles, and sources of meaning within the context of therapy. This can support a more complete understanding of the person and a more holistic approach to care.
For some clients, spirituality or religion is a source of comfort, belonging, guidance, and strength. For others, it may be tied to confusion, loss, shame, spiritual struggle, or harm experienced in religious settings. Often, it is both. A therapist who can explore these experiences with respect and clinical skill is better able to understand the client’s values, worldview, suffering, and hopes for change. This can deepen self-understanding, support more effective treatment, and help clients live more fully in alignment with what matters most to them.
Despite its importance, many clinicians receive little formal training in how to address spirituality, religion, and existential concerns in psychotherapy. As a result, these issues may be overlooked, handled hesitantly, or approached in ways that feel uncomfortable or invalidating to clients. Consultation and training can help clinicians develop greater confidence, competence, and sensitivity in this area of practice.
I offer consultation to mental health professionals who want to deepen their ability to assess and integrate spiritual, religious, and existential concerns in psychotherapy with greater clinical confidence, depth, and care.
Consultation for Clinicians
I have specialized education and training in spiritually integrated psychotherapy and offer consultation to colleagues who want to become more skilled, thoughtful, and at ease in addressing spirituality within clinical work.
In consultation, I help clinicians learn how to ask about spirituality, religion, and meaning in ways that are respectful, clinically useful, and well timed; recognize when these dimensions may be shaping the therapeutic process; and work more skillfully with the beliefs, practices, conflicts, and values that organize a client’s life. Consultation can also support greater discernment about where conversations may deepen, where avoidance may be present, and how spiritual strengths or struggles may influence treatment engagement for both clinician and client.
I offer one-to-one peer consultation, group consultation, and educational presentations for mental health professionals who want to build skill in assessing and integrating clients’ spiritual, religious, and existential concerns. Consultation may be ongoing or time-limited, depending on the clinician’s goals, experience, and practice needs.
Questions for Clinicians to Consider
How comfortable am I when clients want to talk about spirituality, faith, or religion?
How might I invite—or unintentionally discourage—a client from bringing spiritual beliefs or practices into therapy?
Do I understand the values, sources of meaning, and beliefs that inform my client’s choices and sense of self-worth?
Do I already draw on practices with spiritual or religious roots—such as centering, meditation, forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, breathing, or journaling—in my clinical work?
Do I ask clients about their spiritual lives, beliefs, experiences, histories, struggles, or wounds
Do I talk with clients about what gives their lives meaning, purpose, or a reason to keep going
Do I know how to help clients engage existential questions such as: Why am I here? What is my purpose? Why do painful things happen? What happens after death?
Do I assume spiritual practices are too personal, irrational, or outside the scope of therapy to be clinically useful?
Do I believe I must be religious myself in order to help clients explore religion or spirituality in their lives?
Do I assume that if spirituality is important, the client will raise it without being asked?
Clients deserve therapy that can engage the full complexity of their lives, including questions of meaning, faith, spirituality, religion, and existential struggle. For clinicians who want to develop greater confidence, sensitivity, and skill in this area of practice, I welcome the opportunity to speak with you about consultation.
